ROCKFORD—“I have the best boss,” says Michael O’Neill with a shy smile.
“Our Lady has opened many doors for me, and I keep walking through them,” he says with disarming simplicity of his saintly director.
He credits her for leading him to the most recent happenings in his life as The Miracle Hunter. One was the opportunity to work with National Geographic magazine editors for their December 2015 cover story on Marian apparitions.
Expressing gratitude for the Catholic author of the story, Maureen Orth, and “very interested and respectful” magazine editors’ work, O’Neill says, “I was so pleased it was so beautifully done.”
|
O’Neill Books Explore Miracles and Mary Author Michael O’Neill says that his new book, “Exploring the Miraculous,” published by Our Sunday Visitor, is a compendium of his years of work and study about miracles. He also discusses how the Catholic Church investigates them, including the healing miracles attributed to persons who have been, or are on track to be, canonized. His colorful second book, “365 Days with Mary 2016,” was “a labor of love for me for many years,” O’Neill says. The book features a Marian devotion — one for each day of the year — drawn from apparitions, holy icons and feast days. Some are legendary, some are traditional and some are well-known, O’Neill says, adding that all are tied to the particular day and have “some level of approval” from the Church. “You see how much the world loves Mary as you flip through the book,” he says. His website, www.365dayswithmary.com, further details each day’s chosen devotion. “The site automatically posts to Facebook and Twitter,” he says, adding about 8,000 people receive a post of the daily devotion and description. |
He mentions a map of apparitions featured in the article as one of his contributions to the story. (See the map and story at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/virgin-mary-text.)
That work led to other projects, including a Dec. 13 National Geographic Explorer television special.
The final product focused exclusively on Medjugorie, which surprised O’Neill who had spoken about a wide range of Marian topics during his five-hour interview. But at least, he says he was happy about the accurate portrayal of his few comments regarding the way the Catholic Church judges private revelation.
Early in December O’Neill was interviewed on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” about miracles and Mary.
And in the past couple of years, he has had two books published, “Exploring the Miraculous” and “365 Days with Mary.” (See box, left.)
O’Neill hosts a Relevant Radio program called “The Miracle Hunter” on Sundays at 11 a.m. He also is working with EWTN on a potential program that will highlight the lives and miracles attributed to various American saints.
And it is all because of Mary.
This Rockford area Catholic says his connection to Mary began before he was born in the Chicago suburbs. (His family is not related to the late Bishop Arthur J. O’Neill.)
His grandmother had left the Catholic faith, so his mother promised the Blessed Virgin that she would teach her future children about Our Lady of Guadalupe every Dec. 12 if Mary would bring that grandmother back to the faith.
“I really loved that (Guadalupe) story,” O’Neill says, calling his much-later, college class research about the tilma of St. Juan Diego “eye-opening.”
But it was Condoleezza Rice who sparked this young Marian devotee’s miracle-hunter ministry.
At the time he researched the Guadalupe miracle, O’Neill was a mechanical engineering product design student at Stanford University. During a conversation with Rice, who was provost at the school, she told him to “become an expert in something.”
“That resonated in my ears,” O’Neill says, adding that Rice’s advice prompted the thought that he could become an expert in miracles and Mariology.
After researching what was on the web already, he decided to create a website that would provide a more critical and not overly-pious look at miracles.
He began his site, www.
MiracleHunter.com, in 1998, and has continued to expand it.
“I get emails from people all over the world,” O’Neill says. “People across all faiths and with no faith at all are interested in miracles.
“For believers (miracles can) play a great role in drawing people closer (to their faith), especially among the young,” he says. “It is a great way to engage young people, a great reminder that God is there.”
However, O’Neill does not get excited about most so-called miraculous signs.
“I’m actually a skeptic and want proof” about claims of miracles, he says. “I play a pastoral role in tempering people’s enthusiasm.”
Although miracles can be “exciting, interesting and Church-approved,” he says, “the centrality of our faith revolves around Jesus Christ.”
Reminding his fellow Catholics that “Public revelation ended with the death of John the Evangelist,” he notes that Marian apparitions are considered to be private revelations. Catholics are not required to believe in them — not even in the famous and highly-approved ones such as Lourdes and Fatima.
The map of apparitions in the December issue of National Geographic drew its data from O’Neill’s website.
There have been 28 Marian apparitions that have been approved by the Church as supernatural, he says. Hundreds, if not thousands, of others have not.
Whether or not any particular claim of a miracle is officially accepted by the Church as authentic, miracles great and small will continue to spark the interest of many — and The Miracle Hunter will be checking them out.